Etsy Launches Marketplace for Artisanal Machine Learning

June 19, 2017

NEW YORK - Eager to cash in on the machine learning gold rush, this week Etsy threw its custom-embroidered hat into the ring with the launch of "Neural nEtsy", a platform for boutique vendors to peddle their handcrafted machine learning implementations.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Etsy CEO Josh Silverman described how the company was positioning itself to target the grossly underserved market for using machine learning in cottage industries. He described in detail a dizzying array of new product possibilities:

Producing purses with special dimensions, pockets, and zipper configurations extracted from a photo of all the crap currently sitting on your kitchen counter

Using image analysis to predict the eventual color distribution of heirloom tomatoes based on seed appearance

Building home decor that listens to spoken words and changes the color of its ambient lighting to match the vibe of the conversation

Converting audio recordings of someone describing how much money they wish they had into custom 3D printed jewelry designs

Generating unique prints of famous impressionist painters augmented with sentiment analysis of a Twitter feed

Manufacturing aprons printed with custom stain probability distributions derived from analyzing footage of a person applying condiments to a bratwurst

Silverman also indicated the company was working on an app store for Neural nEtsy that would allow their merchants to expand their offerings to phones, such as a paid Snapchat filter that makes you appear to be wearing a chic summery dress that you don't want to actually buy.